Sequence
by Tuneful
Summary: Satya Vaswani did not play with her toys like other children. She sorted them by size-type-color, arranged perfectly in neat lines, and proudly beheld her work. She devoured books and articles about architecture and could talk about them starry-eyed and for hours.


Satya Vaswani did not play with her toys like other children. She sorted them by size-type-color, perfectly in neat lines, and proudly beheld her work. When her mother picked up a toy monkey and tried to show her how to zoom it around and make the appropriate sound effects, Satya simply got upset; she was ruining the arrangement. The first time she built a massive, meticulously planned city out of blocks that took over the entire floor of her room her family thought it was cute. The fifth time they were not so amused. She devoured books and articles and could talk starry-eyed and for hours about her favorite things: synoptic planning, new urbanism, classical design. She didn't seem to notice that nobody thought buildings were as interesting as she did.

She didn't like the way the other adults spoke to her mother as if Satya wasn't in the room. _Your daughter is so strange, Sakshi. What kind of child prefers protractors to dolls? Why won't she look us in the eye? Is something wrong with her?_

Once when she was seven, they went into the city for an errand and stood outside for a moment while her mother looked for something in her purse. There was a small fountain nearby, gurgling, and a dog was barking, and two men were having a conversation a few feet away, and the people walking by provided a constant ambient clamor. Somewhere music was playing too loud, and a second dog joined the first, and the noise kept getting worse. Everything crashed into each-other, one running over the other, and every new discordant note hit her ears with a sharpness and got under her skin, building into an an absolutely intolerable crescendo. Why did people have to be so loud and awful? Why didn't anyone else care? Everything was so busy and bright and so horribly loud and every little thing bothered her and she could not stand to be there a second longer, so she clamped her hands over her ears and ran, and her mother yelled something after her which just made everything worse.

When she caught up she grabbed her roughly by the wrist and scolded her, "What were you thinking, running away like that? What's wrong with you?" Satya didn't have an answer and tried to stare at the ground, and her mother clamped a hand around her chin and demanded, "Look me in the eye." but Satya couldn't, she never could, and she started to cry.

Satya loved cities but it was hard to be in them. She loved dravidian gates and brise soleils and curvilinear tracery but didn't understand why they had to be so full of dirt and noise and rough textures and filth.

When she was ten, she came home from school to find men in austere white uniforms with the most impressive holoscreens she had ever seen standing in her living room. They said they wanted to ask her a few questions, and within the week her mother had packed her a suitcase and sent her to the train station for the start of her new life at a private school a considerable distance away.

* * *

Everything at Vishkar was clean and quiet, made of glass and light. The technology! It was unlike anything in Hyderabad. Self-cleaning, perfectly shaped, windows and walls and mirrors and screens in one, objects conjured from thin air. It was how things should be. She had her own small room with a bed and a desk where she could keep everything exactly as neat as she wanted it. She got excellent marks in her classes, but especially the ones where she was allowed to build. She threw herself into her schoolwork, and spent her free time creating even more designs. She thought that here, at the Institute, people would share her interests, but the first time she piped up with a long-winded explanation about some obscure facet of architectural history and the other students looked at her in that particular who-does-she-think-she-is way, she got the message loud and clear that things would be no different in that regard. Well, that was fine. She didn't need people to like her. She didn't care if they thought she was strange. She had never had friends before and didn't see any reason to start worrying about it now, and besides she was getting better grades than all of them. She would be fine all alone.

One day, the week before classes went on break for Dasara, she had made the mistake of staying up too late and her tiredness made things seem worse than they were. Her uniform was too scratchy and the boy next to her kept tapping his foot under the desk and everyone kept chattering and her teacher was watching some soap opera while they worked but the volume was just a bit too loud and the sounds kept running over each-other and before she knew what she was doing she had stood up abruptly out of her chair and everyone was looking at her.

"Is there a problem, Miss Vaswani?" her teacher asked.

"I cannot-" she looked for the right words that would make them understand that the world itself was too bright, too loud, too tactile, too much at once for her but worried that might make them decide she was too much trouble and send her home. "...concentrate. I can't work when it's too loud." She stared at the edge of the woman's chin and hoped that was close enough. The teacher did not seem to notice. She just nodded, made a note on her computer, and asked if Satya would like to go work in the library for a little while.

When she returned to her room that evening, someone had left a pair of headphones. The large kind. Noise-canceling. There was also a message on her holoscreen that she was to report tomorrow to room 1503 at 3:00 in the afternoon. Someone from Vishkar's higher offices wanted to see her.

* * *

"It's nice to finally meet you, Miss Vaswani." said Mr. Korpal, very young for a man in his position, leaning over a desk made of light. "I saw your final project in Mr. Korrapati's class, it was phenomenal. I've a mind to show it to the CEO and have him build it into our next neighborhood."

There was stack of papers to his left that hadn't been stacked properly; a few of the pages were sticking out at odd angles from the rest of the pile. It bothered her. "Thank you." she said, trying to determine whether she was in trouble or not. "It was slightly different than most of the others in the class. I'm glad my grade was not penalized for it." she paused, making an effort to look at his forehead, as she had learned by then that most people couldn't tell the difference between that and their eyes. "About yesterday, I am...sorry for the disturbance."

He looked surprised for a moment, as if he hadn't considered it worth mentioning. "Don't worry about that, Miss Vaswani. We've taken note that you have different needs from some of the other students, and we're working on improving accommodations. I'm here to talk to you about your cityscapes, though. They're excellent. I wanted to let you know to keep at it and we may have some very special projects for you here at the company after you graduate. There is nothing wrong with you. We know the things you're building are different than that of your peers, Miss Vaswani. They're better."

"...Thank you." she said again, floored, and then distracted again. The paper stack was inches away from his hand. It would only take a second to fix it. Why doesn't he fix it? How could he not notice?

Mr. Korpal smiled kindly. "Your work is some of the best we've ever seen." and then he frowned for a moment, as if rethinking the meaning of his words. "And even if it wasn't, we would still want you to be comfortable. That's what we're doing here, right?" He gestured to the large window behind him, where one had an excellent view of the skyscrapers of Utopea, modern, neat, orderly buildings. "Vishkar is making things better for everyone. For you, too. I'll let you return to your studies, but please let me know if there is anything else you need."

She nodded. "I will keep that in mind." she said, getting up from her chair and moving to return to her dorm. As she reached for the doorknob she stopped for a moment, and turned around.

"Yes?"

"The food."

"The food?"

"I have issues on occasion, with texture. I can't always eat what's in the cafeteria."

He nodded. "Make us a list."

Satya returned to her room to study for the rest of the evening. On the way there the same set of words kept echoing in her head.

 _There is nothing wrong with you._

* * *

Symmetra's office, a reasonably sized one on the 12th floor of Vishkar's corporate headquarters, had 3 bookshelves across it's eastern wall, organized by subject and author. It had a small set of speakers loaded with her favorite music to work to, her desk (immaculate), a potted plant which she sprayed with water exactly thrice, twice a week at exactly noon, and in the center of the room a specialized table made for constructing holograms and hard light models.

Her newest personal project was a redesign of that poor favela in Rio. They still hadn't gotten housing done, though Sanjay insisted they were working on it. Symmetra figured she would go ahead and design it anyway, and ensure that it was so exemplary they would have absolutely no choice but to put it in place immediately. It was some of her best work. Neat, orderly, faultless, perfect, form and function harmonious with design. It would have everything they needed; she would make sure of it.

She kept hearing about the people there blaming Vishkar for the fire. Horrific. Mere conspiracy theories, no basis in reality. How dare they, honestly? They should be grateful for what they were getting. Vishkar was trying to improve things for them! She was improving things for them. She couldn't let some petty smear campaign distract her; the truth would be clear enough when she transformed their busy, dirty shantytown into tidy, modern, organized streets. She had done it before, in other cities.

She thinks of that sweet little girl in Brazil and how she deserves to live somewhere safe and clean, and of herself growing up in messy, chaotic Hyderabad. She remembered the first time, after her graduation, she had been up for her first big architecture job, and the board of directors asked her numerous questions about her blueprints and ideas, and one of them asked her about her design philosophy.

"What do you keep in mind, when you build?" the prim woman had asked, "Your ethos? What are you trying to do, with every structure?"

Symmetra gave her a canned, corporate answer along the lines of synthesizing community needs with aesthetics, but it was later when she thought about it long enough to have a clear answer.

 _I want to build an ordered world. A harmonious place, where things aren't so overwhelming. I want to build a world that is comfortable for me to exist in._

Vishkar had given her that, and the opportunity to give that world to other people. Anyone who would dare say a word against them either misled or malicious, and would be proved wrong in time. She would not contemplate anything else.


End file.
